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Hands-on review: ​Rapoo Gaming Keyboard and Mice

The Rapoo V100 gaming keyboard is a great gaming keyboard for any gamer.

The keys have a satisfying ‘click’, but are soft to the touch. Whether this is a good or bad thing will entirely depend on your personal preference, but even though I am used to a keyboard with very ‘clicky’ keys, I still thought the keys on the Rapoo V100 felt great.

The keyboard was responsive enough for any average gamer. Obviously more hard-core gamers would prefer a mechanical keyboard for that millisecond advantage, but for anyone else the speed would be absolutely fine.

Another great thing about the Rapoo V100 is the simple yet elegant design. With multimedia controls in the top-left and miscellaneous function controls in the top-right, you always have quick and simple access to everything you need, whether that be volume, rewind, pause/play, etc.

Possibly one of the best things about the keyboard is that LITERALLY ANY button on the keyboard can be reprogrammed to do pretty much anything: open webpages, folders, applications, toggle/adjust settings, type a multi-key combo, play a sound. The reason this sets it apart from most gaming keyboards is that, usually, you can only reprogram the dedicated ‘G-keys’. Whereas with the Rapoo V100, if you really wanted to, you could program the WASD keys to play sounds or open programs. At first, I thought it was all a bit unnecessary, I mean, who in their right mind would want to reprogram a letter key that they need to…you know…type the letter? However it’s nice to have the functionality there.

Then there’s the 16-million-color backlighting. Nothing fancy, just your standard, full-keyboard single-color backlighting with a few extra options for ‘APM breathing mode’ which is where the breathing frequency self-regulates based on your actions-per-minute, as well as a standard ‘breathing’ and ‘colour cycle’ mode.

Onto the mice. Both mice, the one that comes with the keyboard and the separate V20 mouse, have a great design, with side buttons as well as a DPI button behind the scroll wheel. The mice have the same lighting modes as the keyboard. The V20, however, is a bit fancier and has a very nice pattern across the whole top. The buttons were perfectly responsive and I had no issues there. However, I personally found the optical sensor to be far too sensitive. I found it picking up the desk, even when the mouse was hovering about a centimetre in the air. This may be fine for someone with lots of desk space and who moves their whole arm, but it does not work well at all for people like me, who lift the mouse up when our wrists bend around to their limit. Whenever I went to readjust my wrist, the camera in the game would unavoidably snap back to where it was a second ago as the optical sensor picked up everything, even when the mouse wasn’t touching the desk at all. The other slightly more minor issue was that the combination of a very light mouse and very springy cord, meant that if the cord was taut, the back of the mouse would spring back with the cord when you let go.

All in all, the V100 is a great keyboard/mouse combo for the average gamer, but if you use your wrist to move the mouse or you want a heavier mouse, I suggest buying a separate mouse.